by Robert Reed
When Seldom saw her, he made an odd little sound.
With a doubting tone, Elata asked, “Is that a papio?”
Seldom nodded and his feet ran in place.
The strange woman said a few words, and one of his father’s crew paused, laughing nervously when he pointed at his own foot.
The papio kept staring at Diamond.
Father walked out to meet his men, and they gathered close around him, letting him speak quietly for a little while. Everybody listened intently. They watched him as if nothing else mattered. Then they started to move away, alone and in pairs. Some broke into shuffling runs. Father called to one man by name and brought him back again, putting a hand on his shoulder, giving him encouragement along with extra orders.
“Oh, the papio’s leaving,” said Seldom, disappointed.
The woman had a different gait than people. She walked easily on two strong squat legs, but pitched forwards slightly, and where the ground rose she used her arms to help climb across the raw, slashing coral.
The last man was sprinting for the farthest tents.
Father returned, watching the ground as he approached Diamond. His face looked tired and thoughtful and very serious, but then he brought up a smile and a sudden wink.
“That was a papio,” Seldom said smartly.
“She’s our official delegate,” Father explained, looking only at his son. “This is their realm. We pay them to use their ground as an abattoir, where we can safely butcher the coronas.”
“Like your butcher block at school,” Elata said to Nissim.
“On a Creator’s scale, yes,” the Master said.
“But we’re very sloppy butchers,” Father said. “Normally this carcass would be hacked to pieces, organs and scales and flesh and skin mixed however seems best, and then we make five roughly equal piles as the delegate watches everything, coming forward afterwards to choose two piles for her people. The first pile is to pay the papio for using their land, while the other pile is our gift or our tribute, depending on how you read the history books.”
The running man came out of a tent, one long object in each hand.
Seldom asked, “Can we watch you butcher the monster?”
Father didn’t seem to hear the boy. He looked at the ground again, one hand wiping at his mouth, one of the fingers absently following the raised ridge of the long handsome scar. “No,” he said at last. “No, you may not.”
Then turning back to Diamond, saying, “Son. I have something to tell you.”
Father walked away from the corona and the tents, following the valley’s slope while Diamond walked beside him, as close as possible. Then his father stopped and called back to the others. “This isn’t a private conversation. Believe me, everybody deserves to know.”
Five of them walked the valley together. The ground was gravel and pulverized coral boulders and short deep crevices jammed full of vegetation and raspy-voiced insects. This was the eroded, depleted top of the reef, and the valley ended with a sharp line and empty air, and Diamond was thinking how easy it would be for a person to walk to that edge and with one more step plunge into whatever amazement lay below.
“What’s under us?” he asked.
“The true world is,” Father said.
“What does that mean?” Seldom asked.
“Quiet,” said Elata.
“Quiet,” said the Master.
“Oh, I’m just making noise,” said Father, starting to laugh. “Don’t listen to me.”
They walked for a recitation. Nobody spoke.
“It’s just the way slayers think,” he explained. “Our world, with its forests and rain and birds, is a cold and very simple place. Each day lets the trees grow a little bit, making the air fresher. Then come nights that last a little while or a long time. But every dawn finds the same forest hanging at the top of the world. A few tree-walkers have died, others have been born, and it’s the same for the reef and the papio too.”
Father quit talking.
Seldom began to talk, but Nissim put a hand over his mouth.
Father asked, “Have you learned much about the coronas, son?”
“No.”
The Master cleared his throat. “I might have unleashed a lecture on the boy. But I’m not the expert on the subject.”
Nodding, Father looked at his son. “I assumed your mother might have mentioned the coronas.”
“Almost never, sir.”
“No? But she did teach you to read, didn’t she?” He didn’t wait for answers. Dropping a hand on Diamond’s shoulder, he said, “I’ve been gone too much. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t know a thing or three.”
Diamond said nothing.
Father extended the other arm, holding the hand flat. “Up here, in our realm, the air is pleasant and cool. Perfect for humans, and that’s how it has always been.” And he lowered the hand. “But below us is something else. The something else requires an entirely different kind of air. And between the realms is a barrier. Think of a floor, flat and perfectly smooth, resting below the lowest branches and underneath the reef. We call it the ‘demon floor’ for some reason or another, and everybody knows that barrier is there, yet like any respectable demon, it can be very hard to see.
“In a sense, the Creation is one house enclosing two enormous rooms. Ride a fletch to the bottom of this world and you can throw out a handful of coral dust, and the dust scatters across the demon floor. That’s a good trick to discover exactly where the barrier begins. The heaviest grit sinks out of sight first, followed by the dust. Thankfully the ingredients in our air are too light or too small to make the passage. But if you drop anything heavier than grit—a coral boulder or a man, or the fletch and its crew—those objects easily fall into the room below us. And at night, when the air is especially calm, your fletch can hover just above the demons and their floor, nothing to see but a faint endless glimmer stretching to the ends of the world. On that kind of night, a young slayer can reach out the ship’s window with a torch and pitcher, sacrificing his beer by pouring it onto floor, watching it flow sideways before sifting through, and if his eyes are sharp and his torch is strong, he can see his good drink drop a very slight distance before instantly turning to steam.”
Diamond nodded uncertainly.
“Now I suppose this would seem strange,” said Father. “If I knew as much as our scientists know, that is. I’ve been told that the magic baffles them and probably always will. Some deep thinkers actually claim that real demons inhabit the barrier, too many to count, and each demon spends its existence sending the heat down and the cold up while keeping the two atmospheres apart. But I’m a person who doesn’t need imaginary creatures. My mind is happy to accept the barrier as being just another beautiful mystery in a world full of nothing else.”
He paused, taking a deep breath.
“If you haven’t guessed, the coronas live in the lower half of the world. In their realm, the air is denser than water and fiercely hot. Take a ball—a hollow ball of our finest steel—and tie it to a steel cable. Then hover low and drop the ball through. Do you know what happens next?”
“It gets squashed,” Seldom said.
“And to retrieve the squashed ball, we have to drop ballast and use the fletch’s engines at full throttle,” Father said. “Which is another intriguing mystery: why is the barrier a lot more stubborn moving in one direction over another?”
The valley was finished, except it didn’t end where Diamond expected. The ground simply dropped into a lower valley that hung over the open air. They were still standing in shadow, the sun hiding behind the reef’s edge. But the day was far enough along that Diamond could stare down at what looked like yellow mist, smooth and bright. He didn’t blink, and his eyes didn’t ache. Glancing up at his father, he discovered that the man was gazing up, not down.
“Dawn is the brightest time,” Father said. “That’s because when day begins, very little grows between us and the sun. But that transparency doesn�
�t last. Minutes after the rain rises, new plants begin growing. The coronas’ realm is full of spores and seeds, and little creatures that swim in that dense air, and before your first meal sits happy in your stomach, a new forest is thriving below us. By midday, the forest is thick enough that the sun is noticeably weaker. By dusk, that air is choked with bladder plants and new generations of odd birds, and the coronas are feasting. The sun vanishes for us, but it never weakens, and for that matter, it never grows brighter. Night comes to us because all of the sunlight is trapped by that hot young forest. Likewise, just before dawn is the blackest moment, and sometimes it feels as if the world will never feel day again.”
The running man finally caught up to them, breathing hard and quick to apologize for being late. “Baby-Tam gave me a message. We can’t call Ivory Station now.”
Father nodded. “The line is broken.”
The man was carrying dark tubes tipped with glass disks. Handing them to Father, he said, “Yeah, and how did you know?”
“I’m a pessimist. And thanks for bringing these.”
Father handed one tube to Diamond, and then he walked a few steps back with the other man, giving fresh commands.
Diamond turned the tube between his hands.
“Do you know what that is?” asked Seldom.
“You do,” he guessed.
“Oh, it’s just a telescope,” Elata said. And she pulled at one end, the tube becoming four linked tubes. “Look through the little end.”
Diamond put an eye to the glass and stared at the valley below.
Father returned and opened the second telescope, but he looked up and out with his bare eyes. “I don’t quite trust these toys,” he said. “They narrow your vision down to one tiny, spellbinding spot.”
Diamond lowered his telescope.
“Can I?” asked Seldom.
He handed it over.
“Night,” said Father again. “It happens here, and in a different fashion, it happens below us. The corona forest keeps growing where it can, but only close to the sun. The farther places, like underneath the reef, fall into their own darkness. And remember. One night can seem long to us, but for those hot fast-living plants, darkness is death. They spread seeds and spores as they die, and the animals lay eggs, and the forest closest to the sun thrives to the end, but the end finds some way to happen. Ends always do. Vapor that was part of the morning air is now tied into the new wood and meat. The dense hot air makes fire inevitable. Sparks happen. You’re never sure where the blaze starts, but it spreads quickly, and the day-old forest explodes. Except this is nothing like our little fires. There are no ashes. No smoke. This is an explosion, an explosion so vast that even the stubborn demons stop doing their work. Steam and thunder rise through the floor, and by the time the steam reaches our old slow trees, it has cooled to where it doesn’t cook us, and slow cold life can grow a little more.”
Father paused, staring at the same point for a long moment. Then he put the telescope to his eye, focusing by turning the littlest tube. What he saw brought silence and then a soft sigh, and then he lowered the telescope, closing it back into one tube.
Seldom aimed in the same direction.
“What do you see?” Elata asked.
“Nothing,” he said. Then he laughed nervously and said, “No, there’s a big airship. Near the canopy, pointed this way.”
The two men glanced at each other. Father handed the telescope to the Master as he began talking again.
“The forest explodes,” he said. “Seeds and spores and the tough eggs can withstand the steam. The only living creatures that survive are the coronas. At least nothing that I’ve seen, and I’ve watched that realm longer than anyone else alive, I’d guess.
“I know coronas. And by ‘know,’ I mean I’m a little better than most when it comes to guessing where they’ll be tomorrow and which one is the easiest to stalk and how to make my kill without killing myself. Which is why an old man can do a young man’s job.”
He gave his son another smile and wink. “I’m sure your mother has mentioned how much I enjoy being a slayer.”
“You hate it,” Diamond said.
“The killing and carving up of these big magnificent beasts, each one older than me and sometimes ancient. But there is one blessing that found me only because I spent my life going out into the sky and killing giants.”
He took his son under his arm and said nothing.
“What?” Diamond asked.
“I want you to know why,” Father said. “Why your mother and I feel so fortunate to know you, whatever you are.”
Lowering the telescope, the Master made a sorry sound.
“What?” Elata asked. “What did you see?”
Nissim shook his head and touched Father on the shoulder, the two men exchanging slow significant nods.
With one finger, Father touched Diamond on his tiny, tiny nose. “The coronas like to visit our world. And do you know why?”
The boy shook his head.
“I don’t know why either. But I know how they do it. Each one of these creatures is full of bladders. It inhales the hot dense air and compresses the air even more than before, and when the bladders open, a roaring jet comes out of their central mouths. That’s what throws it past the stubborn demons. And then the corona’s black muscle inflate the same bladders, making them round and swollen but with nothing inside. Nothingness is lighter than hydrogen. The vacuum buoys the creature up into what has to feel frigid and dry.”
“They come to feed,” Seldom said.
“Sometimes,” Father said. “I’ve seen them hunting for meat at the bottom of the canopy, which means they’re hungry, maybe. But they’re more likely to ignore easy meals. If they were humans, I’d describe them as being curious wanderers, but they aren’t human and ‘curious’ might mean nothing to them. Usually they travel alone, and I don’t know why. My sense is that they’re not loners by nature. In fact, I’d wager quite a lot that they’re intensely, obsessively social creatures. Even alone, they are constantly, constantly talking to one another. One of their voices is deep and loud, bladder spitting out words that shake our world. And they also leak stinks that make other coronas happy or angry, and they have special organs hidden under every scale. They’ll lift those scales and produce brilliant light. The color of that light can change instantly. Color has meaning. Certain patterns are exceptionally important, and I’ve deciphered a few words and concepts, but really I know nothing. Nothing. And nobody else understands the coronas. But I’ll tell you what most of the slayers believe; the real reason they rise into the high thin empty air is the same reason why people stand on a stage when they have important opinions to share: from high, they can broadcast their brilliance down to their entire world.”
Father paused, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand.
“What we usually see here are the younger, immature coronas,” he said. “Most of them are smaller than the poor lady behind us.”
“A lady?” Elata asked.
“They’re always a mixture,” Father said. “Slayers are supposed to count the glands and leave good records, and this one is three parts female to two parts male. And I don’t know why. But we know quite a bit about their ages and movements because we keep careful records. Every harpoon wears its slayer’s code, and the files are kept at Ivory Station. Now I wouldn’t be surprised if we found several old harpoons buried in this body, which gives us dates and places and descriptions about when she was last seen. My guess? She’s eighty thousand days old, maybe older. Which seems like a long time but isn’t. There are older and much larger coronas, giants that rise up through the demon floor only under the most special circumstances, and those behemoths are astonishingly ancient.”
Father paused, looking down. “How’s the foot?”
“It’s fine.” Diamond lifted the other leg, testing the ankle. “Good.”
What wasn’t quite a smile appeared, and Father looked at the demon floor and the yellowish light
. “Coronas usually surface near the reefs. For some reason our district sees more activity than most, which is why we have a proud history of chasing them. But more than a thousand days ago, a genuine marvel—a creature at least twice as big as the normal behemoth—appeared near the middle of the world. It was a huge dark unexpected beast that pushed its way through the floor, managing to make one long lazy circle before vanishing again.
“It rose up late in the day, and I couldn’t have seen it if I wanted. Slayers hunt the margins, not the middle. Of course we were sorry to have missed the spectacle, but nobody expected a second sighting. Coronas don’t fall in love with patterns. We assumed this was a fluke, a one-time experience. But less than thirty days later, the giant showed again. That time it was early morning. She emerged from the same point and made the same slow journey. I heard later that she was so enormous and so distended by her vacuum-swollen bladders that she cast a shadow across the District of Districts, causing a modest panic.”
Hugging himself, Seldom said, “Wow.”
Diamond watched his toes and the gritty ground.
“The third appearance was at night,” his father said. “The old lady was seen only because people had figured out her schedule, and everybody was watching for her. As I told you, coronas make their own light—most of it purple and colors beyond purple. But ‘Help’ is a plea made with a golden fire. Our mystery corona emerged that night and flashed a yellow cry in all directions. Normally it would have been brilliant, a searing light visible across the world. But despite its size, the beast had a feeble glow. Only at night would the plea be visible. And the fourth time it appeared, another twenty-nine nights later, she repeated her cry for help, but even weaker than before.
“So there was a pattern to her appearances, and it was precise. People made graphs and looked into the future, deciding it would be midday when the behemoth emerged again. And we were ready. Every healthy, sober slayer in the world was hovering above that location, and exactly when it was predicted, a long dark shape emerged from the superheated soup.”
Quietly, Nissim said, “Oh yes. I remember.”
